Tuesday, January 15, 2008

A partnership with clay

Last Saturday I met this very passionate and talented lady, Ms. Bronwynne Cornish. A little background about her, she is a ceramic sculptor and has come down from New Zealand to India for a month to practice the art here. Her interest lies in hand-building methods and she was kind enough to demonstrate the techniques that she uses to small group of ten on this really chilly and windy Saturday morning ;)

I had a chance to chat up with her post the workshop and I must say I have never met someone who talks so beautifully and lovingly about clay. She has been practicing this art since she was twenty and is now in her sixties and has the enthusiasm of a child. She has been traveling all across the world to learn and get inspired and let me share this with you, India is one of her favorites ;)

She says “I love to partner with clay and not work against it. There are so many times we try and force the clay to a shape that we want, even though the clay is clearly telling us to stop working on it. So one must obey the clay and listen to it”. Now that is so true and so beautiful. Nature inspires her and her work has these gorgeous textures stolen from the earth. Just look at the picture below, she used the bark of the tree to get this yum texture and later made a mask out of it.
She also says “I see animals in each one of us and so I enjoy making lots of these trans-animals (animal-man and animal-woman) pieces where the animal characteristics are brought out. (Now that is so very true, how many times has my ex-boss reminded me of an ass! I would love to do an ass-boss one day ;)) Check out this rat woman she created in minutes.
Do I need to say that after meeting her I came back a happy girl, completely in love with her spirit.

Her work is available at the Masterworks Gallery, Auckland and Mary Newton Gallery, Wellington. So if anyone gets a chance to see her work, please do share it with all of us. It’s her birthday on the 17th of Jan and I’d like to wish her a very happy birthday and lots of creative years ahead.

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